Hi, I'm Wade. I run the Move Weight Foundation, a federally recognized 501(c)(3), and this campaign funds public records access in Lubbock.

This work started in Miami, Oklahoma, when I tried to find out how my own city was operating and learned what it costs an ordinary person just to ask. So I built a way for people to ask without putting their name on anything.

Lubbock is now one of fourteen chapters. Here is what already exists at lubbock.exposetexas.org, before a dollar is raised: 115 public meetings indexed, every one with its agenda attached, refreshed automatically every week.

The question this chapter exists to answer comes from two facts sitting next to each other. Lubbock owns its electric utility, and Lubbock sits on a shrinking aquifer. A city that owns its power company makes decisions a regulator would otherwise make. A city drawing on a declining water supply makes decisions whose consequences arrive slowly. Both are decided in public meetings and recorded in documents.

Requests cost money, and that is the honest obstacle. Cities bill per page, per hour of staff time, per certified stamp, and you do not learn the price until after you ask. One request comes back at $12, another at $200.

This fund pays those invoices so residents never have to.

Every dollar goes to records fees. The bill arrives, we pay it, and what comes back is published whole and unredacted - linked to the city's own copy so you can check us. I file in the Foundation's name so nobody in Lubbock has to attach their own name to a request.

Your donation is tax-deductible. The Move Weight Foundation is a 501(c)(3).